Fair Trade Judaica (FTJ)

Fair Trade Judaica promotes fair trade as a Jewish value through educating the Jewish community, and expanding the production, distribution, and sale of fair trade Judaica products. We envision a world in which Jewish consumers recognize fair trade as an expression of core Jewish values, seek out fair trade Judaica products, and use their purchasing power to support thriving communities of artisans around the world.

Bean of Affliction: Chocolate, Child Labor & Choosing Fair Trade

“We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. And God took us out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. And if the Blessed Holy one had not taken out our ancestors from Egypt, we and our children and our children’s children would still be slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.” (Passover Haggadah)

The gift of freedom our people received generations ago bestows upon us the obligation and responsibility to work for the liberation of all people. How can we fully celebrate our freedom without acknowledging millions of people today who are still forced to work, thousands of them young children who work in cocoa fields to bring us our delicious chocolate?

It is often easy to overlook the role we may have on other’s lives. It requires us to look hard at the individual choices we make on a day to day basis, like the food we eat and the ritual products we use to celebrate our Jewish identity.

One powerful way is to choose Fair Trade chocolate, grown with standards prohibiting child labor.

We are each endowed with “a strong hand and outstretched arms.”Let us use them to extend freedom to others. We can:

Fair Trade Judaica's website would never have happened without three extraordinary people:Lisa K. Chanoff, whose generous donation made the project possible,Dean MacDonald who captured our essence with his brilliant logo and artistic influence, andAaron Hodge Silver who took our ideas and built a website we can grow into for a long time to come.